Previously open only to students from Hong Kong and Taiwan, this year, ten students from Chongqing will be selected to participate in a month-long White House internship program. It's not entirely clear what the program is, as the English-language press hasn't exactly picked this one up yet. more ›

In this video, which was taken at the Hu-Obama state dinner, Lang Lang and Herbie Hancock perform a four hands version of a Maurice Ravel song. Afterwards, Lang Lang plays a solo called "My Motherland." more ›

Yesterday's copy of the Wall Street Journal has a very interesting observation: that few of China's top political and business leaders these days have white hair:

It is possible that could have something to do with genes, but something else is involved, too. For aging men of influence here, the dye job appears to have become as commonplace as the Mao suit once was. more ›

Okay, Shanghaiist has got several hundred blogs on his RSS that he scans through everyday. Some things scream at us, others are quickly forgotten and yet others are hidden in some corner of our brain for (mostly useless) information ready to be used at some future point in time. There are all these bloggers that you've never met personally that you can form an impression of only after a long period of reading their blogs. You're reading them every single day, and sometimes it almost feels as though they're your friend, even though you don't really know them. It's most surreal. more ›

The tiny Caribbean island of Grenada suffered a huge diplomatic embarrassment at the inauguration of a US$40 million China-financed stadium built as a gift from Beijing when its police band decided it would perform the Taiwan anthem instead of the March of the Volunteers. Oops. more ›

Shanghaiist has been wary of taking pictures of protesters, as it's gotten us in a wee bit of trouble with the authorities before. We got a call a couple of a days ago from some of the folks connected with the housing demolitions and tenants' rights "movement" here in Shanghai, telling us that something was going to happen on Monday. We went, and saw this man (pictured here), making one last stand on the roof of a building where he lives and which is slated for destruction. He'd been there since early in the morning and policemen on motorcycles were on the street monitoring the situation. Our contact happened to live nearby and we managed to get some snaps before they urged us to leave for our own good. more ›

Photo from south.com.cn. more ›

Photo by spiky247 taken from the Shanghaiist photos page. To see your photos on our photos page, use Flickr and tag your photos "shanghaiist". Or you can email your photos to photos@shanghaiist.com and they will automatically appear on our site. more ›

Shanghaiist has a retraction to make -- what we previously dubbed the "Chinese Oscars" in this post was absolutely wrong, because, naturally, the 6th Chinese Language Movie Awards (第6届华语电影传媒大奖）deserve this title. This awards ceremony had previously been held in the mainland, but this time (April 17), they moved it to Hong Kong. And guess who won? Tony Leung Ka-fei (Liang Jiahui) won best actor for the 80th eighth time for his role in Election (Hei Shehui). The only "surprise" came in the success of Peacock (孔雀), the debut film from cinematographer turned director Gu Changwei, which took home awards for best director, best original screenplay, and best actress for Zhang Jingchu. Election won best film awards, again. We don't get it -- if all these film awards are pretty much the same, and there are so many of them, then isn't each one worth correspondingly less? Does this really award good cinema, or is it just a kind of collective Chinese movie industry circle-jerk in installments? You be the judge. more ›

There's a whole wide world out there, and here's the proof: more ›